Early Years
North Island College originally had a teaching and learning committee for many years working together to bring in keynote speakers, special professional development sessions, workshops and learning opportunities. The committee shared resources, held gatherings to plan upcoming sessions and had a representative sit on the BC Teaching and Learning Council. Additional supports were given to short term positions to explore the impacts of the new BC K-12 curriculum on NIC courses and other teaching and learning initiatives.
BEGINNING a centre
The teaching and learning centre officially began January 2020 with 3 staff members and a director and was named the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation. The staff jumped in to support instructors moving to digital delivery during the pandemic, as well as offering numerous learning experiences to enhance instructors’ digital competencies. With the launch of an institutional program review process in early 2020, the Centre staff worked with instructors to gather evidence, write self-studies, organize external review panels and engage in action plan items.
Technology upgrades
The Centre also helped train and support instructors using newly implemented technology platforms including BlueJeans web conferencing (February 2020), Kaltura video platform (June 2020), Brightspace digital environment (Fall 2021) and Kaltura Virtual Classroom (Winter 2022). This Teach Anywhere website was launched in June 2020 along with the Learn Anywhere website for students in digital learning. Over the past years nearly 220 pages of content, resources, videos and links have been developed on both websites.
Office Space
In June of 2023, overnight a fire took out the physical spaces for the teaching and learning centre including all teaching, technology and learning resources. Staff had to transition to working from home until the Centre could be relocated and furniture purchased. In January of 2024, the staff were able to move into their new spaces located in the Trades Training Centre in the former Adult Basic Education offices. One of the two small classrooms was repurposed into 5 cubicle offices and 2 exam rooms were used as offices. The computer area was redesigned into a gathering space, coffee bar and lounge space with whiteboard and data projector for all sorts of uses. During the summer of 2024, the second small classroom underwent an upgrade to be a HyFlex/multi-modal training room and training space for Centre activities. Most of the materials lost in the fire a year earlier were repurchased and set up and so by June 2024 the Centre is open and functioning.
Quality Enhancement
In 2023 and 2024 the Centre shifted its priorities to diving more fully into supporting the work of academic quality enhancement to ensure our programs and courses are current, relevant and timely with new processes, policies and procedures about curriculum, learning outcomes and evidence of student learning. The Centre staff work with Institutional Research and Planning and the specific role of Senior Research Analyst – Program Quality (Wayne Hopwood) to support the program review process. In addition, the Centre led the Quality Assurance Process Audit (QAPA) deployed by the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills involving an external review panel of our peers, an institutional report and the Academic Quality Enhancement Working Group. The institutional report was submitted in Fall of 2023, the site visit was in November of 2023 and by March 2024 the response to the QAPA panel report was submitted to the Ministry.
Growing from Within
Also in 2023, the Centre explored a new model of growing talent from within the College. Five limited term (10 month) positions were created to allow for exploration of the field of educational development by NIC instructors. Many learning experiences, observations and training activities occurred throughout the year. At the end of the 23/24 academic year, those temporary positions were converted into 2.5 FTE regular positions and 3 people were hired in regular positions. One of those positions is focused on Trades and Technical Programs and another one on Health and Human Services to provide specific supports for those areas needing discipline expertise.
Year ahead
As of August 2024, the Centre has 8.0 FTE staff and are mostly located on the Comox Valley Campus in the Trades Training Building with 2 staff located in offices at the Campbell River campus. The Centre moves forward with all regularly funded employees with a focus on two areas: Teaching and Learning Innovation (teaching, learning, technologies, course development, reflective practices, assessment etc.) and Academic Quality Enhancement (quality learning fundamentals, program enhancement, program review, professional development, scholarship of teaching and learning, evidence and feedback etc.). The Teach Anywhere website got a makeover to align with these areas of focus.
In 2024-2025 the Centre will lead work in enhancing practices of instructors through a variety of supports and services, continue to advance quality learning through program review process, lead the development of a teaching and learning/digital learning institutional plan (called the Roadmap for Quality Learning), work on the action items from the QAPA process and take on GenAI through guidelines and learning experiences.